This month marks the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11 and Neil Armstrong’s giant leap for mankind.

Mr. Armstrong is still alive, and, as far as I know, in good health.  But alas, one day, like all of us, Armstrong will shuffle off this mortal coil.  When he does, his passing will no doubt be news – it will lead on all of the broadcast and cable news programs, and decorate the front pages of the daily papers.  He might even for a brief moment replace The Chosen One’s smiling visage on the covers of the etiolated news weeklies which grow thinner in size and substance with each passing week.

But will millions tune in to watch the funeral proceedings from across the globe?  Will thousands descend into the streets in tears, inconsolable at the loss?  Will there be a sports arena filled with famous and non famous mourners, gathered to celebrate his life?  Will models and preachers and sports stars proclaim his heroism?

Doubtful, I should say.

The outpouring over Michael Jackson’s passing has made plain a seething and hideous fact:  We have become a desperately sick people, incapable of distinguishing between achievement and artifice, between histrionics and heroics, between glitter and gold.

I look up at the moon sometimes and am thunderstruck: There are footprints up there.  And an American flag.  Mankind put its first tentative toe in the frigid cosmic waters 40 years ago – that is Neil Armstrong’s legacy.

Michael Jackson’s legacy?  A handful of albums filled with entirely shallow, unoriginal music – and a dance move called the moonwalk.

As millions mourn for Jackson, I mourn for our enfeebled and rapidly fraying republic.

He was friends with Al Sharpton and Elizabeth Taylor.  He was idolized by Justin Timberlake, Flavor Flav — and Madonna.  Even those who had slapped him with lawsuits — like Paul McCartney, Tommy Mottola and John Landis — praised him. Everyone from Arnold Schwarzenegger to Diddy issued public statements of their profound sadness.  In short, Michael Jackson transcended most boundaries set on Earth. 

Setting aside his many oddities — of which, there are too many to count (the hyperbaric oxygen chamber, Bubbles the Chimp and those creepy sleepovers hit just the tip of the iceberg), Michael Jackson proved that sheer talent can eclipse almost anything else — race, politics, you name it.  How does one build such a legacy?  In this age where concert audiences are routinely served up politics with their favorite songs, isn’t it refreshing that Jackson never had the urge to preach politics while on stage?  His fans never had to endure lectures about the failings of their leaders or rants about abortion or war or political hate-speak. Memo to Springsteen: you were born to run with Wendy, not John Kerry. 

When Jackson appeared on MTV in the 80’s, he never lined his videos with secret political messages or code-laden song lyrics.  Instead, he served up sequined gloves, moonwalks and dancing monsters.  America ate it up — demanding more and more.  In the 1990’s, many artists increasingly found that wasn’t enough.  Music videos and programs like “Unplugged” often became platforms for music acts to pitch pet issues and politics.  The channel formed its own liberal skewing news organization, voter outreach and is now a required stop for presidential candidates. Funny, but Jackson is often credited as the very reason for MTV’s success — just one glove and a moonwalk, folks – that’s all it took. 

That is not to say Jackson was apathetic — far from it.  When he penned the #1 smash “We Are the World,” he brought together everyone from Bono to Kenny Rogers to Paul Simon to raise money and awareness on African hunger and poverty.  It was this brand of activism that ultimately made Jackson a uniter, not a divider. 

Jackson’s tours were never sponsored by MoveOn.org and his songs had a catchy way of moving the dial without slamming us over the head with rhetoric.  ”Man in the Mirror” was cleverly written in the first-person (“I’m starting with the Man in the Mirror, I’m asking him to change his ways” not “You must start with the man in the mirror…”), it’s a little twist but a mighty powerful one. 

Today’s artists searching for ways to make a cultural or political difference might learn something from Jackson. He knew the ABC’s and 123’s of never isolating your wider audience. In the end, he always seemed more comfortable on stage than in his own skin.  Off the wall, yes he was.  But he knew what he was doing on stage.  It’s where he connected with people.  But, more importantly, it was where he brought the world together.

You are realizing your age today if you grew up in the 1970s or ’80s. Farrah Fawcett, whose iconic image was as ubiquitous on the bedroom walls of American teenage boys as Kim Il Sung’s was in the homes of North Koreans, died of cancer at 62 yesterday. Age is the cruel fate of all sex symbols. In Fawcett’s case, she not only contended with Father Time but with the public’s changing tastes that dated what once symbolized sex. Demographics, and Sir Mix-a-Lot, killed the pin-up girl monopoly of bleach-blond anorexics. But even twenty years after her heyday, ’70s postergirl Fawcett so symbolized sex that her 1995 appearance in Playboy became the bestselling issue of the 1990s. To put this in perspective, an over-the-hill Farah Fawcett beat Pamela Anderson, Jenny McCarthy, and Denise Richards in their primes.

Six years after Farrah Fawcett appeared on the bestselling poster of all time, Michael Jackson released the bestselling album in history. Thriller was so big that, not only did it inspire fashion and dancefloor trends, it outsold numbers two and three on the all-time list combined. Jackson, who before our eyes morphed from cuddly, precocious singing/dancing machine to the world’s biggest pop star to Howard Hughes, died yesterday too. For Jackson, life’s victory lap–that even an overweight and jumpsuited Elvis enjoyed–eluded him. The last image embedded in the public’s mind is that of Michael Jackson in a courtroom rather than on a stage. A court of law acquitted him of sexually abusing a minor. The court of public opinion convicted him of being strange. Seeing Farrah Fawcett in her red bathing suit, or Michael Jackson moonwalking, brings us back to a time when we were young. News of their deaths reminds us that we’re old.